Songs of
Kenneth Leslie

List
Halifax Citadel
Prospect Road
Glooscap's Eye
Go, Lank Rover
John Angus
California
Cape Breton Lullaby

PAUSE FOR QUERY
Why do you good folk stare so hard at me?
Of what are you afraid? that I may take
a breath of air as if the air were free?
that I may eat and sleep and dare to wake?
and feel the sun you feel? and walk abroad
upon the warm earth whose wet grasses flow
to quench your feet, not mine? What sort of God
gave you the key to bind or loose me so?
Is it because within my self you've seen
your dark selves branching like an evil tree,
and with my growth your illness thickens green,
that you forever grind your axe for me?
Then finish grinding, lay it to the root
of your ill thinking, lest your thought bear fruit!
A hand unburied on a battlefield
might well express my features who remain
alive upon the earth, nor yet quite
yield to dissolution, tell how I disdain
the pity of kind friends for this distress,
nor ask the pity of my God whose grace
is a drawn sword, but I must learn to bless,
if only dust, then dust in my embrace.
Let me forget what carried me away,
let me forget the body that I served,
let me be lying open while the day
slowly runs out between my fingers curved,
keeping no thing at all in my control,
saving no thing except perhaps my soul.
This is a casual love then, so you say,
coming and going as the light that weaves
a wavering pattern on a windy day
upon the pathway through the moving leaves,
sifting itself in such an easy fashion
that we are caught with it before we know,
holding it in our burning-glass of passion,
and hate its coming, knowing it must go.
As if the giver or given could control
the myriad laws and counter-laws of need,
as if a calculation in the soul
could parcel heaven's hunger from hell's greed!
So, it is cold and casual, you say.
Cold as the sun! Casual as the day!
Have I then pressed white iron on your eyes,
and have I seized your proffered hands and flung
their kindness down, and did I wreak surprise
against your spoken candour? Did my tongue
launch sudden horrors on your frightened ears?
Then I have thrust myself beyond the edge
of your forgiveness, and these tardy tears
smarten my penance for the sacrilege.
Dear love, your love is both a life and death
in me, its whetted point is buried deep
and doubled-barbed against my barest breath,
so that I want no waking, dare no sleep,
Know then, my breath, my sleeping, and my waking,
that I am breaking too when you are breaking.
 
A warm rain whispers, but the earth knows best
and turns a deaf ear, waiting for the snow,
the foam of bloom forgotten, the rolling crest
of green forgotten and the fruit swelling slow.
The shearing plow was here and cut the mould
and shouldered over the heavy rain-soaked lands,
letting the hot breath out for the quiet cold
to reach deep down with comfort in its hands.
The sap is ebbing from the tips of the trees
to the dry and secret heart, hiding away
from the blade still green with stubborn memories;
down in the roots it closes the door of clay
on grief and growing and this late warm rain
babbling false promises in the pasture lane.
The Valley streams lie open to the tide
and to the second light that, now the sun
is hid, pours headier wine into the wide
meadow that stretches beneath Blomidon.
Look, then, and draw your fill of liquid light,
dreaming with me upon this drowning shore
that we are one forever and no night
can drive a wedge between us any more.
Drain the bright Basin ere that sombre barque,
freighted with dusk behind the Ardoise Hills,
casts her black shadow on the last flood-mark;
drink hard against the night while heaven spills,
and shut your ears upon that sound of weeping
there in the shadow where the ebb goes creeping.
 
An old sharp cry comes back to me again,
to my heart through the break that your heart made,
a collie's cry herding the cows to the lane
from the meadow pasture. I had been afraid
it was forgotten, but the falling bars
are quickly near me and the stable's night,
hoofs stumbling to the stanchions and the stars
bathing the orchard with unshadowed light.
You have brought back the hurt in the heart's
core for a dog's death and the shrill swelling joy
of riding a load of hay through the barn door
and the sweet dizzying airs an earth-sick boy
breathed and still breathes on that clean farm,
breathes now and breathes forever, safe from harm.
 I was put out of countenance by bloom,
 as if a dark mind could be such a dark
 that it would push away into a gloom
 the glow of petals and would smudge the mark
 of sun-gold on a face or book or rug,
 as if a coward mind could unfold wings
 and fly abreast of midnight, mad to hug
 its blindness from the sharp lit edge of things.
 But now that I am truly blind I frown
 with inward vision on a wild parade
 of colour rich and deep enough to drown
 he outward eye, straining to hold one shade,
 striving no more to push them from their place:
 the rose, the rug, the sun-gold on a face.
Day slipped out of the web of her fog-wet gown
and buried her bright face in the pale sheen
of the maple leaves and pushed her fingers down
in the damp moss under the deeper green
of the darkling spruce and found a cool mind
and turned and looked back through the lucent panes
of maple leaves at the sky she had left behind
and traced each pointed leaf and its intricate veins.
Lying there she shook with a sudden mirth
and waited awhile without breathing a breath
and nestled closer into the hollow earth
and knew a bliss that would have welcomed death,
knowing she could not deeper drink delight,
and she dreamed there of shadow and of night.
 There was no time to talk, manoeuvring through
 those sharp-set seas, no time to take a breath,
 beating between the teeth of gales that blew
 us inch by inch upon a jagged death.
 A hand could touch a hand, changing the wheel,
 an eye could catch the quick glance of an eye,
 clawing from hell with one sail and a keel
 against the stark persuasion of the sky.
 Now we have time to tell the worth of waking
 through weary watches in the throat-black night,
 tell it together with the dawn-wind shaking
 new sails alive, proud wings of a bird in flight,
 tell the tamed sky and the quiet blue,
 the canvas filled with air, I filled with you.
 
Tempest is done, the winds of time are tame;
the world is air breathing out of the west;
the world is water whispering a name,
water to bow whispering rest, rest.
The wind is song, a quiet song in the shrouds;
the world is home, home is the wide world;
the sails are piled up white to the white clouds,
the sails are filled and no sail is furled.
In creaming light, in crested joy they climb
beyond the skysails where a homely sound
is cradled out of the roving winds of time
that move with mystery from the blue profound.
Stand with me here on the smooth deck until
the song has healed our wounds and soothed our ill.

Pages Crafted by Last Updated July 25, 1999